For the past year, we have been watching to see how the Trump Administration approached protecting families from lead exposure as part of its Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) effort. Would it continue the impressive progress we saw in 2024 or roll those successes back as part of its deregulatory and budget-cutting efforts? Ten months in, we examine the signals and actions in a series of blogs.
In our earlier blogs in the series, we described the Trump Administration as taking positive actions regarding its commitment to protecting families from lead in drinking water. For food, it has been continuing important, but modest, actions.
In contrast, as we explain in detail below, for lead in dust, soil, and paint, the situation is alarming. The White House asked Congress to eliminate key HUD and EPA funding for lead programs. EPA weakened soil-lead cleanup guidance while proclaiming “protecting children from harmful lead exposure is a top priority for the Trump EPA.” And HUD is making it harder for lead hazard reduction grant recipients to succeed.
We are struck by how it is so different than food and water, especially since lead in soil and dust, especially from deteriorated lead-based paint, are such widespread and significant contributors to high blood-lead-levels associated with lead poisoning.
Let’s start by describing the Biden Administration’s four important milestones regarding lead in dust, soil, and paint in 2024:
- Transformed and tightened dust-lead standards: In response to a 2021 order by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, EPA revised its dust-lead hazard standards and clearance levels in October 2024. The rule established that any measurable level of lead was a hazard and established an “action level” to replace the clearance level. We applauded the approach, especially with the improvements made to the proposal based on comments, and touted a long-term payback to society of $8 for every dollar invested. In April, we provided recommendations to risk assessors to implement it.
- Strengthened cleanup guidance: We applauded EPA’s January 2024 decision to revise its guidance to cleanup residential soil contaminated by lead at Superfund and RCRA hazardous waste sites. The guidance tightened immediate removal levels from 400 to 200 parts per million ppm (ppm), used CDC’s 3.5 µg/dL as the target blood lead level for cleanups, and set 100 ppm as a screening level when multiple lead sources were involved. EPA estimated that the guidance would reduce lead exposure over the next 60 years for more than 436,000 young children and 15.7 million adults aged 40 to 79.
- Awarding historic levels of HUD’s lead grants: Since 2016, Congress has recognized the value of HUD’s lead and healthy homes grants by significantly increasing funding each year, reaching a peak of $415 million in FY22. For reasons we described in prior blogs, HUD struggled to attract sufficient grantees to meet its standards. In response Congress began reducing the funds, and, in FY25’s budget request, HUD asked for Congress to revamp how it awarded grants, a move Congress wanted to consider in future years. In October 2024, HUD responded by awarding a historic $420 million.
- Leveraged RCRA to Clean-Up Lead Dust: In March 2024, in cooperation with Connecticut, EPA used its hazardous waste authority to order a property owner of an apartment complex in a renovated old factory to assess and clean up lead-based paint hazards after the agency determined the hazards “may present an imminent and substantial endangerment” to tenants.
EPA also continued to enforce the lead-safe renovation, repair and painting rule (RRP). One important focus was protecting do-it-yourselfers misled by renovation cable shows that presented unsafe and often dangerous work practices that violate the RRP. Under the consent decree, the shows committed to addressing the issue in an episode and in its social media. This focus started under the first Trump Administration with “Fixer Upper” in 2018 and “Rehab Addict” and “Bargain Mansions” in 2020. Under the Biden Administration, EPA continued the efforts with enforcement involving “Good Bones” and “Maine Cabin Masters” in 2022 and “Fixer to Fabulous” in 2024.
We explore below how EPA and HUD have approached lead in dust, soil, and paint under the current Trump Administration.
EPA Reconstitutes Senior Lead Committee and Recommits to 2018 Lead Action Plan
In a positive sign for stability, in July, EPA Deputy Administrator David Fotouhi sent a letter to agency leadership stating that “[r]ecognizing the need to ensure continued progress in reducing lead exposure, the Trump Administration is reconstituting the Senior Lead Leadership Coordinating Committee . . . and a parallel operational Lead Coordinating Committee.” He said, “EPA is continuing to work under the government-wide 2018 Federal Lead Action Plan,” affirmed the four goals1 in that plan, and directed headquarters and regional offices to designate “Lead Leadership Champions” and operational and communications contacts. In addition, S. Xiah Kragie would continue as the agency’s action lead coordinator. We have not seen other agencies, including HUD or CDC, make similar statements.
For those like us who needed a refresher on the 2018 Lead Action Plan, it was adopted by the President’s Task Force on Environmental Health Risks and Safety Risks to Children as an update to its 2000 Federal Strategy to eliminate childhood lead poisoning by 2010. The Biden Administration continued to implement the 2018 plan and released a progress report in April 2024. The Task Force, now chaired by Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, with 17 other federal agency heads as members, was formed by Executive Order 13045 in 1997.
In September, the Task Force highlighted the “Make Our Children Healthy Again Strategy” released by the White House’s MAHA Commission. The Strategy notes the role of the Task Force in increasing public awareness and knowledge but makes no mention of reducing exposure to lead. Because the May MAHA report on which the Strategy was based specifically noted that lead dust as an important source of exposure for infants, the Strategy’s silence on the issue is a concern. Nonetheless, EPA’s recommitment to the 2018 Lead Action Plan and setting up an internal structure to implement it are good signs.
Asking Congress to Eliminate Key Funding and Programs Plus Slashing Staff
EPA’s recommitment to the 2018 Lead Action Plan in July is difficult to reconcile with its May budget request to Congress. In that budget, EPA sought to eliminate the $14 million in funding for its lead risk reduction staff that manage lead-based paint certifications as well as $16 million in grants to states to support the effort.
In addition, HUD asked Congress to eliminate new FY26 funding for its lead hazard control and healthy homes grants. The request said the department would rely on unexpended funds from prior fiscal years for FY26 and that it planned to restore the funding in FY27. For those familiar with the budget process, after funds are cut, they are typically difficult to restore. Any funding gap risks disrupting essential progress at state and local level to remedy dust-lead hazards for low-income families.
While we recognize that agencies often ask for cuts to meet budget goals with the understanding that Congress would restore them, this type of cynical action undermines the agency’s credibility and is alarming when coupled with staff cuts and other actions.
By August, the House and Senate Appropriations Committees had rejected the proposals and restored much of the HUD and EPA lead-related funding. While nothing is assured, we expect Congress to follow the committee recommendations. To keep track of Congressional funding, check out the National Center for Healthy Housing’s FY26 tracker. To call for Congress to fund these programs, join the National Safe and Healthy Housing Coalition.
Further, EPA and HUD have shown a willingness to make staff cuts that undermine program success. Earlier in 2025, the Trump Administration cut the staffing levels at HUD’s Office of Lead Hazard Control and Healthy Homes (OLHCHH) and EPA’s lead-based paint program by roughly one-third.
Backsliding on Soil Cleanup Guidance
We had good news in July when EPA added Trenton’s Historic Potteries to the Superfund National Priorities List (NPL). The listing, proposed in September 2024, provides access to critical funding for long-term investigation and cleanup work necessary to address the extensive contamination from lead in glazes and coatings by now-defunct pottery operations dating back to the 1800s. See our blog praising the action.
The situation turned bad in October when EPA rolled back the action levels in its January 2024 cleanup guidance for Superfund and hazardous waste sites. As we explained in our blog criticizing the decision, EPA justified its action claiming the guidance was “a new clear approach to accelerate lead cleanup at contaminated sites” and claimed the guidance was too complicated and resulted in inconsistent implementation.
From a big picture perspective, we found it disturbing that EPA chose a target blood lead level that was less protective than the one set by CDC in 2021. It is contrary to the 2018 Lead Action Plan, which emphasizes interagency consistency. The rollback will create confusion and suggests it disagrees with CDC’s assessment of science.
In addition, EPA went backward on the soil-lead level that it would use to take immediate action when it found lead hazards. These actions often consist of low-cost, interim steps such as covering the soil or putting a fence around an area to keep children away.
For a quarter century, EPA used 400 ppm. In January 2024, the agency lowered its Removal Management Level (RML) to 200 ppm. In October 2025, EPA changed it to 600 ppm claiming the need to be consistent with how it handled other chemicals.
EPA’s backsliding on the RML puts families and communities at risk of ongoing exposure to lead while EPA determines what long-term action is needed; a process that can take many years to complete.
In the guidance, EPA says that in communities where lead-based paint hazards are also present, the agency will not consider soil-lead levels between 100 and 200 ppm when setting long-term cleanup levels. This will impact families in rural areas such as those in Oklahoma, Missouri, and Idaho as well as more urban areas such as Omaha, NE and Trenton, NJ.
The agency claimed that this process is simpler to implement. We understand the need for simplicity but putting blinders on is flawed because it ignores the reality that it is the cumulative effect of lead exposure from all sources that must be considered.
Making the situation worse is EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin’s statement in the press release that the revised guidance showed “protecting children from harmful lead exposure is a top priority for the Trump EPA. Children can’t wait years for us to put a shovel in the dirt to clean up the areas where they live and play.”
The agency’s 2024 analysis showed that the levels set in the revised guidance puts 450,000 children at greater risk of IQ loss resulting in significant lost lifetime earnings and 1 million adults at greater risk of premature death due to cardiovascular disease. EPA should be honest with the public about the implications of its action on health.
Creating Barriers for Rural Communities to Manage HUD Grants
HUD offered $364 million in lead hazard reduction grants in June 2025. Due to the shutdown, we do not know how HUD did in awarding lead and healthy homes grants in 2025. Normally, those would have been announced in early October. We did hear that the grantees were getting notified, which is a positive step.
However, we are very concerned that HUD has rolled back its assistance and sent confusing messages to lead hazard reduction grant recipients. At the last minute, HUD leadership decided that its grant staff could not attend—in person nor remotely—its April meeting of new and renewing grantees. This meeting is essential to help grant staff learn about changes to policy and practice, get questions answered from HUD staff, and network with their peers. Nonetheless, the meeting took place with experienced grantee staff stepping up to help others.
It is not surprising that we have heard from grantees about confusing and inconsistent messages from HUD. For example, HUD began sending mixed messages about whether the practice of allowing a subcontractor provide project management services to the local government’s project director. This practice is allowed under the grant and is particularly important for small and rural communities that have strict limits on long-term staffing commitments and often have enjoyed success with consultants.
In addition, HUD appears to have changed policies regarding participation at educational events. Past practice has been to allow the department to specifically approve use of travel funds for events it does not host.
Earlier this month, HUD indicated grantee staff would need to use personal leave—essentially vacation time—to attend these educational events. Inexplicably, the department failed to mention the possibility that the grantee might use other resources to cover the time and travel.
The change will make it harder for grantees to succeed because it discourages staff participation in important educational and networking opportunities that are likely to help them be more effective.
HUD’s efforts are inconsistent with the Senate Appropriation Committee’s provisions in the FY26 appropriations that “directs the Department to continue to conduct outreach and improve the NOFOs to encourage more grantees to apply and make efficient use of lead hazard reduction grant funds. The Committee directs the Department to include in such outreach smaller and rural communities, and nonprofit organizations and community development financial institutions [CDFIs] interested in being co-applicants.”
Continued RRP Enforcement
On the positive front, EPA enforcement staff are continuing the momentum from past years. In June, they fined the “Restoring Galveston” cable show. And EPA’s staff conducted an excellent “Lead-Based Paint Awareness for Building Code Officials” webinar in October that sought to engage an important audience in the efforts to protect children from unsafe renovation practices.
In addition, in November, Lowe’s Home Center entered into a consent decree with EPA to pay $12.5 million in fines and implement a rigorous compliance program to address a series of about RRP violations. These violations happened even though it has paid a $0.5 million fine in 2014 for similar problems. The agency took similar action in December 2021 against Home Depot, fining the company $20.75 million.
We are pleased to see EPA continuing to take enforcement against retailers and cable shows that have a national impact.
- Goal 1: Reduce children’s exposure to lead sources; Goal 2: Identify lead-exposed children and improve their health outcomes; Goal 3: Communicate more effectively with stakeholders; and Goal 4: Support and conduct critical research to inform efforts to reduce lead exposures. ↩︎